All the popular blogs are doing it.From: What Privileges Do You Have? - based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. (If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.)

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college. (for 1 class)
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (requirement for the middle school I went to)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
9. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. Much less than 50% of the time.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. I got the guest room in my teens when we didn’t have guests.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course. (all free)
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (Dominican Republic, Miami)
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

I actually did a Google search to get the original exercise, and I laughed really hard, because post after post had most of these lines emboldened or underlined, and I’m here with about 6 lines in bold. And as I graduated junior high school, a predominantly Latino school, I never knew I’d be inundated with products of such privilege. Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I thought that having this kind of privilege would make it easier for some of my classmates to become more benevolent, especially since they had less worries economically and got a head start on much of the material we studied in our four years.

Unfortunately, that not only proved false, but it’s one of the many factors that played into my antagonism towards some of my classmates. They were so comfortable with their privileges, they more readily demeaned others who couldn’t / wouldn’t get certain items. And naturally, it only got worse in Syracuse, where stories about massive car wrecks only made me and my friends roll our eyes after the person who caused the accident would say “I’ll just get a new one from my Daddy in a couple of weeks. No big deal.” And when you have “Juicy” sprawled across your ass, it’s a really easy life … really.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t had a lot of luck in my own right. I went to a poor but well-managed public school, a good middle school with small class sizes, and a private high school with its share of good resources. I had a lot of opportunities that most people in my demographic didn’t get, nor even realized they could. I’m a product of these fortunate events, and I’m happy I got what I got.

In this country, there’s this politics of access. Those to the right of the issue say that everyone has access so long as they try their hardest. They’re the ones that usually ask “Why don’t these people work hard to attain what the rest of us have?” Those to the left of the issue are the ones usually asking “Why doesn’t everyone have the same access to these privileges?” I find myself to the left, since the politics of the left demands a lot of deep digging, and deflecting the images posted in front of us about the grandness of this empire. Underneath it all, there’s no equity, and underneath it all, we don’t do enough to reinterpret successful tips for the underprivileged in this country (and in dirty not-so-secret secret news: in order to have rich people, there must be poor, and thus with all the very rich people there are many destitute areas all over this country.)

You can give people access to museums for free (NYC does it), but will they have the proper education or historical background to understand what they’re observing at the museum, even with the little notes telling them what the artifacts and painting represent?

You can have free opera showings and Caucasian-centric musicals for the masses, but do you risk telling other cultures theirs is not good enough to be considered “cultured”?

You can give as much financial aid to some of your less privileged but promising students so they can attend your institution, but are we preparing the population who got in through a trust fund or as a legacy for the culture shock as well?

Because if not, access is simply a way of telling people “See, we did something” knowing that it would do nothing to ameliorate the problem, quasi-placating the critics and thrusting the responsibility on the victim.

I’m even aiming this at well-to-do Blacks and Latinos, many of whom forget from whence they came, but that’s another post altogether. The politics of access demands that some people have it and some many don’t, because if it’s something everyone has, it’s not that special and hence not a privilege. Yet, those who already get the privilege consider it a right of birth, and don’t know what to do with themselves when they lose those “rights.”

I suppose that’s the irony of not having anything; having something above anything is considered a privilege, and when you have nothing to lose, there’s nowhere else to go but up.  Right?

jose, who wants to know how to get  1/2 a million without the FBI catching feelings …

Shocked? Bewildered? You shouldn’t be.

Outside of Dennis Kucinich, I haven’t been impressed with any of the candidates really. I’ve disbanded myself from all political parties, and frankly, I’m disenchanted with all the choices I have now, which leads me to this:

“We must understand the politics of our community and we must know what politics is supposed to produce. We must know what part politics play in our lives. And until we become politically mature we will always be mislead, lead astray, or deceived or maneuvered into supporting someone politically who doesn’t have the good of our community at heart.”

- Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech, April 12, 1964

I’m no Malcolm, but I swear he’s speaking to some of us from the grave. I had a discussion about the discrimination that both of the candidates face with my lady, and while I contended that Obama and Hillary face their own discrimination based on their race or sex respectively, I also found myself discussing people who didn’t really speak to me. As I’m chomping down my arroz con habichuela (rice and beans, people), I’m sitting there like a fool trying to justify whose plight is worse in the media.

Just then, I think: really, are they looking out for me?

When we look at Hillary and Obama based on their voting records, they’re almost identical. Obama diidn’t get to vote for the Patriot Act or the Iraq War. Yet, Obama’s still lambasting Hillary for a vote he seems to support (since he continues to use his votes to fund that war). Hillary’s camp (looking at you, BET founder Robert Johnson) made some rather harsh and albeit racist comments towards Obama, so even with all the sexist comments people make about her, she has a hard time gaining any credibility with her deft tactics.

On paper (i.e. their plans and designs for their version of America), Hillary’s got the better health care plan, saving hundreds of dollars against Obama’s plan, and many years in politics to back up her claims. On TV and around the country, Obama’s got a better movement behind him, people of all races and classes rallying behind him, and some of the most thrilling speeches in recent history. But frankly, I even support Al Gore’s positions from 8 years ago more than I do either Obama’s or Hillary’s at this point, and I’m definitely a more educated voter now.

The candidates’ plans are all pipe dreams unless we really start investing in our own self-worth. No celebrity-filled pop music video featuring my favorite artists or stacks of campaign money from some of my favorite actors and actresses can convince me otherwise. I couldn’t care less for Obama if he has no clear position about education when he’s been a huge beneficiary of excellent education in this country. I couldn’t care less for Hillary either (or Bill for that matter), especially since her political bedfellows include GOPers keeping us from true and universal health care. It’s been fairly obvious that, despite all the progress we think we’ve made, the poor are poorer and the rich are richer.

I often think that there’s no point in me voting in a heavily Hillary-influenced state like New York for any of these candidates if the Most Children Left Behind Act still helps corporations privatize education and helps destroy unions, if the need for universal health care doesn’t awaken any of these candidates who line their pockets with monies from those very companies we need protection from, if we still have young men and women dying needlessly for oil’s sake and when they come back into the country, we don’t respect them by giving them adequate benefits for them or their families.

Of course, I won’t even touch McCain, Huckabee, or whoever the Republicans will try to throw into the race since the higher-ups aren’t pleased with their leading candidates. They’re a crowd I wouldn’t get too close to for fear of contracting a plethora of contagions and other icky shit.

And I love seeing people get into discussion about politics and how it affects them, but we can’t vote for the politics of “the lesser of two evils.” It’s either that we vote for the person that represents our views or we don’t. And if we don’t like the person, then let’s withdraw our vote until we like who we see. To paraphrase Malcolm, I’m not shooting my bullet ballot until the right candidate’s up in my range.

jose, who wants to know what you’re thinking as you read this …

p.s. - Don’t just throw out the word “teachers” in a crowd just so people can clap for you. Either you really support them or you don’t. Simple as that.

A few notes of interest:

1. Yes, I cleaned up around here. Click refresh, and tell me what happens to that header. Do it a good 7 more and you’ll get your wishes granted ;-).

2. The oddest thing happened on Friday. One minute, my Feedburner says I have 83-93 readers, and the next, I have 299! Sick. What’s more, it goes back down the next day. Weird.

3. Yes, it’s my birthday on Thursday. Fun.

4. Memes that highlight the differences between men and women / Blacks, Whites, Asians, Latinos, etc. / rich and poor in a defensive and divisive way bore me to tears these days. I used to be enthralled by them when I was younger because I was able to contrast my unsophisticated observations about those differences and the ill-conceived notions of roles different people take in those stereotypes. While I agree that some stereotypes come from real research, I’m more ready to believe that those lists along with hack comedians and delusional, angry people make these lists up to reinforce divisions amongst the sexes, races, and classes when we’re really all people.

5. Cloverfield had an awesome preview, but it was an awesomely bad movie. Great effects, and snide social commentary that in some ways, I found interesting, but that ending was abrupt as all hell. Rather than make us think for a second, it made us think to leave. People in the audience laughed about as much as they were scared and grossed out. I wouldn’t watch it again, and I want some of my money back, but if you do watch, prepare for the worst.

6. Yesterday was my boy Omar’s birthday, and whenever we all get together, it’s just a mess of historic proportions. We went to Carmine’s, a popular Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side with family-style dining. Anyways, Kenny, one of the realest dudes and resident ALM (Angry Latino Man), Mike, my homegirl’s boyfriend, and Omar had a heated discussion (some in the restaurant might have called it an argument, but that’s besides the point). Every so often, I’ll interject with an off-beat joke here and there, but last night, I was more good for a hearty, body-aching laugh.

As I’m observing them, I notice that, on their side of the table, Kenny’s sitting on the left, Mike’s on the right, and Omar’s at front and center of the table, appropriate if not ironic. At first, it was pleasant enough, with each side making their points, but then it got really intense, curses being flung across the table and the rest of us caught in the crossfire. I’m all for political conversation, and all the participants brought up awesome points from their side. Yet, what struck me the most was how, after all of that, they’re still friends.

Of course, I was more on Kenny’s side of the argument, even if I was sitting on Mike and Omar’s side of the table. After all, how can anyone at the table argue against poor people when we were all the sons and daughters of immigrants or poor people? We were all the privileged offspring of people who had just enough of the essentials, and for many of our relatives and neighbors, they weren’t lucky or privileged enough to receive a college education and live on a a much better income than minimum wage. It’s easy to dismiss that when we’ve never had to experience that for ourselves.

Not to say that our fathers were anything like Phillip Banks (of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fame), but we sometimes get the Carlton and Hillary effect, where the parents consciously protect their children from knowing about those struggles or the children live incongruously from that reality, concentrating solely on case study of self rather than percentage. Will, the hoodlum he is, often reminded them of the position they’re in and from whence they came, which is why Ashley, the most liberal of the three Banks offspring, turns out the way she does. She was still rich, but she got a better sense of what came before her, and that’s important.

But I’m a socialist by nature, so I’m inclined to this opinion, and I’ve already written my stance on all of those matters, but my opinion doesn’t dismiss their contributions to their families or their people. After all, we still shared our personal lives with each other, and ate from the same dishes. There’s still, inevitably, common threads of human decency that run through all of us at that table, and somewhere in between all of our arguments lied the solution: a huge plate of ice cream with all the fixings. We all sat there for a good 5 minutes, quietly letting the food settle. Mike ate the candle apparently, mistaking it for licorice. Omar and I laughed about stupid MySpace people. Kenny started hating on people. We left the restaurant and all went our separate ways, but we’d see each other again. As it should be.

jose, who can’t stop looking at his theme, and has Pearson and Aaron to thank for the inspiration …

2 weeks ago or so, I watched Charlie Wilson’s War, and I must say, this movie had my attention the whole movie. I was enthralled with the idea of a covert war, mainly because things of this nature happen so frequently but are kept from us by the national media. In any case, what really made me contemplate the world’s ills a little was the bit by Gust Avrakotos (wonderfully played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) in which he says:

A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, ‘Oh how wonderful.’ But a Zen master who lives in the village says, ‘We shall see.’ The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, ‘Oh how awful.’ The Zen master says, ‘We shall see.’ The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, ‘Oh, how wonderful.’ The Zen master says, ‘We shall see.’

Powerful. It’s amazing how even when a few people fancy themselves as benefactors to a certain situation can they end up being their executioners. For instance, I take a glance over at Dominican Republic, a country wrought with so much promise yet so much poverty. In the song “El Niagara en Bicicleta” by Juan Luis Guerra, he discusses a trip he took to the medical office, and the trouble with just getting medicine in that country. I thought, for someone as rich and popular as he is, if he can’t get good health care in his own country, what does that mean for the other inhabitants of this country?
With so many American-titled streets and statues (there’s even a Vietnam there, fittingly enough), one would think the country was a property of the United States (kind of like putting the Monroe Doctrine on its head). Yet, this property still has problems keeping the electricity on, still can’t have fair elections, can’t get a real sewer system running, still have drastic medical needs, and have had a series of dangerous robberies even in communities that never had issues with theft on such a massive scale before.

Yet, people in these Americas get mad because so many of us whose families immigrated from other countries would rather concentrate on the countries from whence we came instead of places like Darfur, the African country du jour for anyone who considers themselves “liberal” in this country. Rather than acknowledging that it’s really easy for some of the inhabitants in this country to drop everything and go save this “Third World” country, (don’t we live on one planet?) they get mad and post secrets like this:

Please. If they really wanted to do some good, they don’t have to look any further than across the bridge, or on the other side of the highway, or a few stops on the train or bus, or on the south or east side of things. Or even better, look in the mirror and acknowledge their own roles in the continued conflicts we have amongst ourselves. Lower East Side, Harlem, South Side of Chicago, East St. Louis, South Central, and Watts all have flashes of the impoverished countries some of these “liberals” think they’re saving. And the easiest way to deal with these neighborhoods is not by ensuring that every citizen of this country has the same rights as the next, but to supplant them and gentrify the neighborhoods they live in so it fits their ideal. Similar to what’s happening to Iraq, but on a smaller scale and unfortunately much more legal.

This isn’t to say that I think anyone who lines up in support of Darfur is a faker. I think they have issues that we can help resolve. However, we’ve gone through a laundry list of countries that need America’s help; it’s like a biannual tradition of twirling the globe in our rooms and picking a country to shift the agenda to. And that’s insincere.

Which brings me back to Charlie Wilson’s War. Charlie finds himself doing the right thing for the people of Afghanistan because, honestly, he wants to. Yet, when it comes to them building their own means of survival by building a school, it’s no longer in the interest of his government. And people who want to save Afghanistan like Joanne live in these mansions as if to relieve their souls from dealing with the obvious contrast between her and the impoverished people of the country.

Thus, it’s Gust, the most dangerous, craziest, and anti-social character in the movie who observes the inevitable most eloquently. Or maybe he’d just been through so much that he’s deprogrammed from the wresting conformity that all these distractions have let us to. Because that too is like riding a bike up the Niagara …

jose, who’s been wielding Excalibur’s sword doing some serious work in class, and will report on that next week for sure …

I’ve been tagged by JD to do the 7 Things Meme. I really thought I got hit with this meme, but it was really the Crazy 8s, so technically I never got hit with the 7 Things Meme. That’s weird coming from someone whose made his rounds and then some in the blogosphere, but I guess it’s only appropriate.

1. My blog runs on a schedule: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. I did this in accordance with my own schedule, and have been since 2003, so it works for me.

2. I usually get mistaken for an English / Social Studies teacher until it comes time to calculate the bill, tip and everything.

3. I have a good 5-6 posts on reserve in case I ever run out of material to discuss on this blog, but the world spins far too fast for me to not have anything to discuss. Come to think of it, I have a good 7 posts in my head as we speak.

4. I used to be a devout Catholic until I found how much of that religion was clouding my judgment. I also researched Islam and Buddhism, but frankly, I’m far too unstructured to care much about any of it. I don’t hate on those who do practice the religions; oftentimes, I have to participate in Catholic rituals due to my family. It just doesn’t work for what I believe, and the more I find out, the less I’m inclined to become part of any specific religion, denomination, or anything of that nature.

5. I have met at least 5 people from every other forum of Internet expression I’m actively involved with except for this blog. On Xanga, I met over 80 people, but only 30 of them intentionally. On MySpace, I met a couple of people here and there. On Facebook, I met maybe 2 of them as well. On this forum: zero. It looks like that might change soon, but more on that to follow.

6. I actually like it when I find something damning about my heroes and idols. It makes them human. When I found out that MLK Jr. had extra-marital affairs, or Malcolm X was once a slick hustler, or that John Lennon used to do tons of drugs, I became even more enthralled in their lives. I mean, the man who we consider Jesus Christ (Yoshua bin Yosef, Horus, the Sun) used to hang with the lowest of the low in his heyday.

7. I’m not as anti-Bush as most of my brethren. Let me explain: Bush is the epitome of American corruptive audaciousness. Not only does he not really care for the people of this country, he’ll tell you (read between the ill-written lines). And if he doesn’t, then everyone else in the office certainly will. For this small cabal of masters and corroborators to exalt GWBush into this position in the face of the American people makes the rest of the country look like idiots for not seeing exactly why and how this all happened. I think Bush is appropriate for a people so apathetic and disillusioned with concerns of whether or not presidential candidates should wear American flags on their lapels or which celebrity will make it to the top of the news before they find out how many more young people die across the Atlantic and within our own borders. This country deserves Bush, and if you say you hate Bush, but can honestly only site that he looks like a monkey, that he speaks funny, or that your friends are anti-Bush so you have to stick with them, then you deserve Bush, too.

Extra: For a blogger, I’m a much better listener than I am a talker.

jose, who finds it disconcerting that these points of view are called radical when I’m just saying what the news is telling me …

I like sitting down listening to Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” and thinking whether they had a worry in the world while smoking their drugs in their recording sessions. At the time of that song’s creation, they were already considered geniuses, so they didn’t really have “bosses,” or anyone to really hold them accountable outside of their mothers. The same can’t be said for the average worker in NYC these days.

Lately, the biggest talk amongst administrators in any sector containing unions has become accountability. Bloomberg and Co. have brought the discussion of accountability to the schools, and 3 reorganizations later, he’s made every principal into the schools’ CEO, thus deflecting responsibility off himself and his administration and concentrating it on the principals. Unfortunately, they also forgot to clean up the previous schema so the residue of years of failure still exist. We still have the same issues, just much more uncertainty, much more profit made off individual schools through “not-for-profits”, and teachers whose job security is in free fall. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be held more responsible for the parts we play in children’s education; everyone, though, has to do their part to make equity and stability a factor in our children’s success. We’re farther from that than before the 3 reorganizations.

Thus, if they can restructure education in that way, then public transportation is a walk in the park. Bloomberg intends to reorganize the hierarchy of the subway, breaking up the system by train lines, and establishing managers for each, with the premise that the manager now has more incentive to maintain order within his or her line. Yet, the decentralization of the subways again serves to distract the average rider from the messy administration that the Mass Transit Authority has established over the last decade or two and place more attention on the workers themselves. The MTA has such a history of mishandling money and providing spotty service on many of the important bus and train lines in the city that they probably never sought out any other solution but dispersion (They could have just removed the offending administrators and effectively cleaned up the department, but I just ride, vote, and pay taxes. what do I know?). Look how well it’s worked for schools (in Bloomberg’s favor).

So the principals hold teachers accountable, the managers will hold train workers accountable, the mayor and co. will hold the principals and managers accountable, but who holds the administration accountable? Not only is this a citywide predicament, but a nationwide problem too. While innocent workers from here to Iraq and all points in between left and right are held accountable for their acts, our administrators have no qualms burning secret videotapes of Al Qaeda interrogations. The more we demand from our administration, the more we probe about their torture and water boarding, the more we hold them accountable for their actions, the more they burn and blackout their documents, inciting even more questioning.

Yet this is the example that the country sets for their city counterparts, which continues to spell opaque terms for people like you and me, wherever we work …

jose

Every morning, I’m usually in the class, setting my board up for my homeroom class, who also happens to be my first period class on Thursdays and Fridays, so it’s almost like having an extended homeroom. The whole school routinely says the US’ Pledge of Allegiance, and the responsibility to recite it over the loudspeaker lands on a lady I’ll call Lady Pledge for purposes of anonymity. She usually starts the pledge at exactly 0805 hrs., so within 5 minutes of the kids making it up the stairs, we start it.

On this particular morning (November 16th, on a Friday no less), she decided to say the allegiance lackadaisically. After her rendition of the pledge that day, I didn’t feel the need to admonish the class for not pledging. To the contrary, I actually just waited it out and gave my announcements like nothing happened. (Secretly, I don’t recite it outside of school in protest of the Iraq War, but that’s besides the point.)

When I decided not to pledge and show the kids we had no reason to pledge that day, it made me wonder in general if we’re training our kids to become drones and servants to a country that’s time and again proven it cares less about urban city children than it does anyone else. It’s general school policy to pledge every morning, and I usually adhere to said policy. After the unenthusiastic rendition, though, it only led me to anarchist thoughts.

Let’s take the pledge of allegiance, for example. It exalts the US as “one nation under God” and promises to stand for “liberty and justice for all.” Now, when I learned social studies, at the very least, I learned how to dissect statements like those, and I had a good understanding of the founders’ point of view. I also had a historical context so I could formulate my opinions. Even if I couldn’t describe my own experience in this country, I at least understood where that came from.

Nowadays, not even that part of American history gets explained clearly enough. Unfortunately, current urban education relegates social studies to the corner with a dunce cap. The school boards don’t care enough about social studies to make our students better informed citizens to this country. I’m not blaming this on history / social studies teachers (some of whom I wish taught me) as I blame the system we’re under. There’s more emphasis on getting kids to pass the ELA and Math tests, and not even well enough so they can read classic literature, dissect opinionated text, understand theorems or write proofs, but just enough to read a menu or punch in a receipt. We’re not even teaching enough to let the children come to their own, fact-based conclusions about the world they live in.

But someone might will argue:

“Mr. V, don’t you have oppressive laws in your class like no chewing gum, no standing up from your seats, no talking, or no talking out of turn? Isn’t that against everything you just said?”

Not unless you forget to explain your reasoning for the rules. The reason why we don’t let kids out of their seats is because it usually means they want to distract someone else like their friends. The reason why they can’t chew gum is because they often leave it in the textbooks or in the desks. That’s not oppression; that’s teaching discipline. But if we don’t make it clear to the kids that we’re showing them discipline, most of them will relegate us to “just another person that really wants nothing to do with us” status. Plus, discipline is the backbone of any movement.

And the suppressive mentality remains rampant amongst too many of us educators. We’re good for extolling the virtues of free thinking, success, and uplifting our children’s intelligence (or so the test scores say). People constantly laud teachers for their valiant efforts, and justifiably so. Yet, we often don’t think of the social ramifications of the messages we send to our children. We also don’t help impart that idealism we entered in with onto our children, and we imply this through our actions and curriculum. Some of us ask them to conform to a certain ideal of success but stripping them of their individual needs, wants, and cultures without even knowing it.

I’m not sure, but I find it somewhat hypocritical of one of the most progressive collectives in the world (teachers) would allow for this kind of indoctrination to happen. Yet, I also see a group of us that can definitely make true change happen. I’m not so much interested in whether my students become conservative or liberal (or insurrectionists for that matter), but they should have choices based on their past experience as well as learning how the systems work.

Then again, I guess liberty and justice aren’t really for all, right? Right.

jose, who wonders whether lady pledge really thinks about the founding forefathers when she recites it …

You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world …

I’m not sure if I still have a couple of sports fans reading, but notice how as soon as the Red Sox won the World Series and A-Rod opted out of his contract, the weather in New York got extremely bitter. Only with baseball does this happen.

In any case, after the workshop model post, the doctorate post, and a million conversations with educator friends, I started thinking about the instructions and mandates we comply with. A good colleague of mine who I fully expect to retire in the next year or so said imparted one of his infinite wisdoms upon me:

If the master tells me to tie that horse to the pole, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Even if it’s a healthy horse, it’s raining outside, and I know it’s going to catch pneumonia, and its next stop is the glue factory if all that happens, that’s what I’m going to do, so when they ask me what happened, I’ll say “Well, that’s what you told me to do. I didn’t say to do all of that.”

It got me to thinking of my own struggles with authority, or as Amber put it, my Authority Defiance Disorder. Why in the world would I want a perfectly good horse to get tied to a pole and leave it for dead? That’s insane; the master tends to forget that he was the one who asked me to tie that horse to the pole, spinning it to his neighbors and other servants that he had no part in all of that.

This all leads to the argument that educators who care are slaves to this work. We’re constantly asked to change what’s working and stay with what’s not all for the masters’ cause. It’ll be little things like, take a pay cut here and we’ll “transfer” it to your pension, but unfortunately, most teachers never get that far.

And we’re also slaves to the work because a lot of us genuinely care about the actual students. I mean, I have a problem when we waste money on no-bid contracts with outside non-profits who pay off principals like Education Station, NESI, LearnIt, and the nastiest of them all, Platform Learning, and waste time on giving Princeton Review data to play with, but we still have classrooms where the teacher can’t get sufficient books for his or her classroom and we’re providing serious disservices to our bilingual populations. I also have a problem with administrators assuming that just because we love our kids, we’re going to work 14 or so hours whenever they need us to in order to finish up that bulletin board or organize this event or that one in the name of the school.

And these are realistic cases that happen. The more normal stuff is the constant adjustments they ask us to make. It isn’t just about the workshop model. It’s the 8 interim tests NYC schools will be put through, the pre-tests, post-tests, diagnostics, and other data-driven paperwork up to our necks. Because it’s part of the job, we take it, and take it good. Meanwhile, my kids won’t be ready for those tests because we spend all this time testing and testing. I’m all for formative and summative testing; it’s important in assessing how a kid’s doing. I do them all the time informally and formally.

But usually, the assessments don’t really assess anything except the city’s ability to annoy the crap out of teachers just trying to do their jobs. I don’t see how I’ll have time to actually administer my own tests, take care of the school’s tests, and the city’s tests, and the state tests. Increible! I think it’s great to have high standards, but to weigh the teachers and children down with all these mandates really leaves little room for innovation and creativity. This hunger for data to skew, twist, and spin into positive news should really disturb us more than it does, but we’d rather live life with rose-colored lenses.

Plus, it leads us all to believe that we don’t care for the kids, but for the numbers. If we take away the teacher’s freedom to teach, properly assess, seat, and discuss, then all you really have is a moderator, something an unskilled worker can do. We can easily replace experienced teachers with people who haven’t the slightest care for the profession or the kids.

Then again, doesn’t it make sense to leave your employees with as little knowledge as possible? Why would you want your servants to take a course or two in educational policy as part of their masters’ program, instead requiring classes like “artistic expression”? Would you want them to discuss amongst themselves and form a community with each other so they can really discuss things, even if it’s just curriculum planning? Wouldn’t you plant certain people in certain positions if you knew they’d be more divisive amongst the rank and file? So many of us take the good teachers, administrators, and parents for granted, like they’re always going to comply, but don’t it be an issue where we don’t want to anymore. These higher-ups aren’t on the front line, so it behooves them to treat us like pawns in their war.

Even with my modest and quiet demeanor in school, I still emit revolutionary ideals. I’m tired of wasting horses for the sake of the master. We need to make serious changes to how we perceive ourselves within this system, or we might as well just bow out now.

jose, who’s always willing to give the right opinion if given the right question …

p.s. - I would make this sound more like an article, but frankly, I’m none of my buddies on my blogroll ;-).

p.p.s. - I’m not bitter, but annoyed by the constant complacency many of us educators succumb to.

Last week, I spoke extensively about one student who had some serious behavioral problems in his classroom, and how that’s a microcosm of what he’s going through at home. Whenever I look at kids like him, I know how to approach them because I’ve been witness to that environment. Unfortunately, because of program restrictions, I no longer work with the child after-school, but best believe I’m still paying attention to his progress.

After all, many of our children come from environmentally abusive backgrounds, and environmental issues in the urban ghetto usually get glossed over. People are quick to blame their environment on the victim when almost all of the evidence shows that our condition stems from oppressive policies stemming back to when this country was first founded. It’s hard to point a finger when the policies don’t just stem from one particular face, but a whole institution. That’s the critical part of understanding how our children can be constantly subjected to the road less wanted.

For instance, people blame poor urban families for their own health issues, everything from diabetes, heart failure, asthma, obesity, and high blood pressure. Yet, the foods we get here are usually in poor condition. I thought the food here was alright, until I visited the Farmer’s Market on 14th St., where I was astonished to see real and fresh vegetables. Real lettuce, with actually red tomatoes, and truly green broccoli and ripe pickles. Natural apple juice, and freshly picked oranges. Usually the first stop that these items make is the more affluent places, where the customers presumably live a healthier lifestyle but conversely where the produce makers will make top dollar for their produce. Meanwhile, a poor urban mother could a) settle for the less than pleasurable and unkempt vegetable aisle or b) go to the canned foods and boxed food aisles. After all, processed foods are much cheaper than organic food, even when the organic food’s quality has been severely diminished.

Then there’s the issues our children’s parents go through. Imagine all the history of denigration they’ve gone through: Reaganomics, crack infestation, needle and blue cap infiltration, gun warfare, massive rape and abuse, police brutality, immigration, English acclamation and retention, prison industrial complex promotions, rent hikes, gentrification, asbestos paint, lead-tainted water, declining hospital service, and abject poverty … and that’s just in my neighborhood.

Many of them have a good from 8-6, then come home and work on their families until 11pm. We have Third World conditions right here in America, and Hurricane Katrina only highlighted that temporarily. Little do people know that the Lower 9th Ward wasn’t pretty before the Hurricane, so what does that say about America’s response to places like that, Watts in California, East St. Louis, Southside of Chicago, Chinatown in NYC, and a thousand other places where poor children of all colors are all subjected to a lack of money and hence care.

Yet, when the children get to school, malnourished and uncared for, they act out. They’re acting out, stealing from each other and screaming at their teachers. Of course, that’s when teachers and administrators who don’t understand where these loveless children come from want to treat them for every possible disorder and dysfunction on Earth. I admit that some of them that do come from this background really need more substantial help than any teacher in the current public school system can offer. Many of these children don’t really have a disorder, and it’s been proven that if you just talk to some of these kids like human beings, those disorders start going away. And even if they’re not getting mistreated for some disability, they’re getting mistreated in the classroom. Some people who don’t belong near a classroom but see the value in looking like they’re making a difference let their inherent classism and racism shine brightest and thus build mistrust for an education for kids who need it.

None of this is new. To the contrary, the miseducation of our youth has gone on for centuries. And people wonder why poor people won’t take out loans to get a new home since money’s meant nothing but trouble for them. Pregnancy and STI prevention information isn’t a deterrent to those who have no self-esteem or self-worth. Thug rap went from reporting what’s going on in the streets to just living life on the fast lane because there’s no future so they live for the present. Colleges are easier to get into but harder to successfully get out of with the increasingly expensive tuitions and steady drop of governmental financial aid (which works well for a booming college loan market). With slave wages for the increasing population of immigrants from the West, South, AND East and a depreciating job market, it’s no wonder why the rich continuously get richer while the rest of us unknowingly have remained on the same plateau of poverty.

The one argument that everyone uses against me when I discuss these multifaceted issues is “But Jose, you made it. You lived in the same environment these people did, and yet look at you now. You’re successful and have a promising future. Why can’t they make it?” And usually, this person either comes from a household where the parents are successful and have been for generations, or a family whose grandparents were successful, and that story didn’t pass onto the person who asked me.

Their point usually starts with how some families they’ve seen concentrate more on getting 200$ sneakers an rims for their cars instead of investing in the stock market. They’ll see people rockin’ gold chains and wearing inappropriate clothing wherever they go. What I also believe they see is exactly what they want to see and not what’s truly there.

I contend that the factors that led me to where I am today were nothing short of fortunate. I had a mother who, with her flaws, pushed me in the right direction, a set of schools that were top-notch in their own respect, whether private or public, a good amount of people who believed in my own ability, and a genetic intelligence and stubbornness that could have prevented me from making some of the decisions I made but they did. If anything in this paradigm fell out of place, I wouldn’t have been as successful.

These opportunities I’ve worked hard for and have been granted haven’t made me any more complicit with what’s around me. I still struggle with different health issues like many of my neighborhood brethren do, and it’s something that I have more information on now. People don’t often break that seal until they’ve tasted a certain echelon of society. I am a firm believer in self-determination and making something out of nothing, but that’s exactly it. I don’t believe in alchemy. As a math person, I think there are simple solutions to some of the problems that afflict us, and it’ll be worth it if we can find those solutions.

Not everyone’s has been as fortunate as I am, though, which is why I fight for them. The images we see of the bling and the pomp are usually a very small percentage of truly poor people, and that’s what we don’t really see. Many of the little gadgets we see the kids have are second hand illegal devices, and liquor stores on every corner surface because it’s the one legal potion people use to get away from their daunting troubles. Change doesn’t happen by just sitting there; we need to be that change.

jose, a proud supporter of blog action day …

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Black, Latino, Both” sponsored by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (of which I am now a card carrying member) and el Museo del Barrio, and it took place at Harlem’s Schomburg Center. The panel featured Howard Jordan, Clarence Lusane, Yvette Modestin, Angela Perez, and Silvio Torres-Saillant, who I know from my Syracuse days. While I’m not inclined to discuss exactly who said what, I do have some notes I’d like to share on a rather excellent panel meeting. I’ll definitely have to go over some of these topics again during the week, but for now, these are only some of the great sub-discussions we had at the panel. (I’m trying to take a 2-hour discussion about a topic spanning 500 years into a few paragraphs. Fun.)

- Anyone who’s read my blog for a while or even took a look at my name can pretty much gather what my identity is. Yet, that’s a challenge if you’re simply taking me at face value. Honestly, people don’t know how to act when I reveal my ethnic make-up, and that works two ways: I have an identity I’ve self-developed and people have their own perceptions of what I am. Those are not mutually exclusive of each other. To the contrary, that’s the essence of understanding the race logic: race isn’t about what you see, it’s about what you think you see. And I’ll never be “Black” or “Latino” enough until people really understand what those terms truly mean.

- Arturo Schomburg. Carlos Cooks. Felipe Luciano. Men who most people would associate with either Black or Latino, but in actuality, were Black Latinos like myself. I only knew of Felipe back in freshman year of college when I first got to meet him, and the rest of them I didn’t find out until yesterday. Unfortunately, that’s what happens when both communities fail to address AfroLatinos. The names of so many other AfroLatinos who fought for their communities were obscured by their own people, and that’s unfortunate. I know a Black Latino college student-activist back in the day who could have used those role models for community activism.

- People within a certain race are not a monolith. Definitions of what it means to be part of a race change vastly depending on place and time. For instance, Jews and Italians weren’t even considered to be White until decades after coming into this country. In the same way, Blacks and Latinos don’t just have one ideology, one perspective, or one religion. There are certain trends and connections amongst many of these groups, but we don’t all have the same interests at heart, either.

- A crucial point of discussion was the evolution of the ethnic make-up of baseball players. For the last decade or two, baseball has become an increasingly Latino sport, though it’s still marketed America’s favorite pastime. Gary Sheffield once said that, despite Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby’s efforts, there are more Latin players than Black players in baseball now because Latin players are easier to control. He elaborated by saying Latino players will get sent back to their countries if they don’t comply, so they have much more to lose. Of course, I agreed with the premise of the argument, as did many of his Latino teammates (those of whom already have their citizenships and paid the Republican Party some dues).

- In connection to that point, there was also a mention of Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez, men who in this country, most would identify as Black men, but when asked, they identify as Dominicans … strictly. While some people may take issue with their identification, I completely understand what these players are talking about. If you’re coming from a completely different racial paradigm than the country you’re visiting, then of course you’re going to strictly identify with your nation. As someone mentioned on the panel, it’s really easy for someone who identifies as a certain group to tell someone else what their race is, without even knowing where that person’s coming from. And that’s not always a good thing.

- Then there’s the issue of immigration, and how it relates to the American workforce. Vicente Fox once sad that Mexicans will take the jobs that Blacks don’t in this country. This is with the premise that either Blacks are lazy, incompetent, or acting too good for a broom and mop. The point disturbed me for a multitude of reasons. The government instills policies for migrant workers that makes them into nothing but rotating slaves. Corporations never have to worry about minimum wage, health benefits, pensions, or anything of that nature for workers who don’t have any rights in this country. Plus, the very people bringing those migrant workers here have agents working to tell working class communities here that immigrants from all around the world are here to take their jobs, so of course on the surface, it’s easy to diminish migrant workers as sub-human.

- Lastly, the one solution for many of our social ills is not through developing some sort of hegemony. Rather, change will come from a multicultural group of concerned citizens. I try to build those coalitions wherever I go, and the results have usually been nothing but positive.

jose, who loves to hear everyone’s opinions on these topics, not just my black or latino brethren …